Just a so-so Super Bowl, a so-so game, so-so commercials, so-so halftime, and
describing the officiating as so-so would be an exaggeration. I did like a
couple of the spots, the guy trying to save himself from the bear with a beer
was funny, as was the lite beer gets darker ad, but the best was probably
MacGyver... that was priceless.

Both teams played poorly; the seabags just played worse - did they think they'd win with 10 points? yeesh. Refs didn't grease up the balls or coat the receivers gloves with teflon between the "ok start" first quarter and the rest of the game. Refs didn't forget how to manage the clock after a two minute warning.

It's not so much that Steelers won, it's that the Seabags managed to lose - what was it, if alexander rushes for over 100 yards they almost always win? Only got 95 on sunday... maybe holmgren thought he was in line for a record or something and decided not to give him the ball.

On the Roethlisburger goal line TD, it really could've gone either way; I don't think it would've been overturned no matter which way the goal line judge had called it; it was THAT close. But it was also only 3rd and 1 with the score 3-0 for the 'hawks at that point - I honestly think Pitt would've gone for it on 4th and micrometers, given how sloppy they had played to that point. I mean, if you throw the ball on the ground every time you touch it, you'd have a higher passer rating that Ben Hamburgler ended up with.

And the two missed indoor field goals by seattle didn't help them either...

Depends on your class, but most can solo into the upper 20s/low 30s, and some (Paladin and Shaman especially) can solo to 60.

Now if all you do is solo you will miss out on content. You won't be able to do any instances (dungeons), or some of the harder quests. And for a lot of it it'll be slower than duo-ing or otherwise being in a small party.

Exploration - Is there a lot of cool stuff to wander around and go "oooh, ahhh missus"

Yeah. I was pretty impressed with the variety of environs and nifty little things in the game.

Character building - Is there a ton of customization you can do to your character

Every class has their own skill sets, although if you read the boards you'll find that there's a fairly limited number of recommended "builds". And if you're soloing then there's probably only one build worth discussing. They've been changing the skills a lot recently though. And you can also customize somewhat through different armor and stuff, but it's pretty limited there (you can't dye stuff for instance).

Acquiring loot

Tons of it.

do you need to use actual tactics and combinations of skills to make it through most encounters?

A lot of it is just click and kill, but it depends (again) on your class, whether or not you solo, and what kind of stuff you fight. The first few levels are easy (and boring in that way) no matter what. After that though you'll have to use skills/spells/etc. more tactically. And if you get unexpected adds then you'll either have to play wisely or do a graveyard run.

Note that the game changes radically once you hit 60. Prior to that you could do most things (even instances) in 1.5 hours. After that it takes longer to do anything "worthwhile" and if your schedule can't accomodate that then you may as well quit. Which is what I did.

I don't know what is up with Walter, but here's hoping everything is okay with him and his family. For those who don't know 2 is pretty-much the premier Web designer out there - responsible for the Blue's logo, Levelord's site design, and many others.

I rarely like 'country music' for some reason, I don't know why. But I like that style. Reminds me of a Tarantino/Spaghetti Western or something.

Beck of course rocks, haven't listened to him for many years. I can't remember which song you did or even what album it was from. Think I'll go look through my stack of records and see if it jogs any memories.

Anyways, it made for some nice background music while reading all these guys go on about their dissapointing grand football finale.

If you post more in the future, try and get it in early again as I like the OOTB bacground music idea...

Yes, I know it's weird that I haven't played it yet. However, lately, for some reason, I've been sorely tempted to go out and buy it. I'm just wondering whether or not I will enjoy it, which is what I'd like some advice on.

I personally don't really care one way or the other about the whole massive multiplayer online bit. In my opinion, the large large majority of gamers on the internet aren't worthy to be called cockroaches, so I can easily forego the "pleasure" of playing with them.In the rare event that I need to team up with some mooks, I just grind my teeth and get it over with (although I tended to get pretty decent teams on Guild Wars).

So, my first question is, is it playable if you mostly want to solo? Or are you stuck after five levels and from there on out you better find peeps to join up with?(Yes, I'm aware we have a guild, btw, so that I could find some good mooks to play with )

Second, mostly I enjoy playing this type of game for :

A) Exploration - Is there a lot of cool stuff to wander around and go "oooh, ahhh missus"?B) Character building - Is there a ton of customization you can do to your character, and lots of skills to invest in (I believe the answer to this is yes, from what I've read in reviews and such over the past year)C) Acquiring loot - My biggest gripe against Guild Wars is that there is no loot, and what little loot there is sucks the big nads anyways. Oh wow, a wand that gives me +8 mana, PHEAR TEH POWER!I prefer finding really awesome stuff. I guess more to the level of Monty Haul'ness than not.D) Is the combat fun? Is it just click and wait for the mob's health bar to dwindle into nothing, or do you need to use actual tactics and combinations of skills to make it through most encounters?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

(Then again, Star Wars Empires at War, BfME2 are both coming out within a month, and rumors keep buzzing about Oblivion going gold within a few weeks...)

DENVER (Reuters) - An injection of two drugs normally used to treat HIV patients completely protected monkeys from becoming infected with the AIDS virus, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

And the bad:

The monkeys were then exposed to a combined human-monkey AIDS virus called SHIV, using a rectal method aimed at simulating male homosexual contact. That happened daily for 14 days and the monkeys also got daily injections.

I do not even see any reason to get worked up over the touchdown that has now brought up geometry in it. That was only on the 3rd down anyway, and it would have been centimeters away even if it was not. Odds are great they would have gotten the touch down on the 4th with such little distance. You would not even have to give it to the quater back, just let him touch it and your straight and can get it over the line.

I'm quite familiar with football, it sounds like more so than you. I also understand that the refs are doing the best they can and the game moves very fast, especially at eye level. The only ref close enough to make the call saw him push off, from his perspective. The other refs were too far away to make any kind of judgment on it. I never saw any replay that showed anything other than his hand on the DB's chest.

There were a lot of crappy calls that game, but that one was not one of them. I don't blame the refs for Seattle losing either, their receivers played like crap. One guy dropped at least 4 catchable balls and their #1 receiver should at least attempt to keep his feet inbounds.

"We're not the same, I'm an American, you're a sick a--hole." - William 'D-Fens' Foster

Odd... I thought the no-call on Jerramy "butterfingers" Stevens actually went in *favor* of the Seahawks.

But yeah... the majority of the stupid calls went against Seattle. It's not Pittsburgh's fault that every single opportunity that the Steelers handed the 'Hawks in the first 3 quarters were promptly flushed down the toilet. Seattle shoulda been up 17-3 at halftime.

I appreciate the responses but I'm pretty sure I found the culprit - a nice little backdoor-trojan horse-virus-worm thingy that I can't quite remember the name of now - W32 something (like most of them). I started Googling the names of the programs in the startup menu that I couldn't identify and the first one I tried (because it was in there twice) turned out to be the worm. Hopefully his Norton (which I hate, btw) will take care of it like it claims it will.

But it also could keep the computer from shutting off properly depending on the motherboard. As the OS sends the signal to the MB to shutdown when it is done…if that signal is never making it through then it will just sit their.

About 3 weeks ago the power here blinked off….one of my computers when trying to start back up was making horrible beeping noise and not working right. I was freaking out at first (because it was the expensive fancy Athlon64)…just turns out the BIOS battery had died and it was telling me and refusing to start up because of it…..and since it was weeks since a reset I just happened to find out about it after the power surge/outage! Boy was I relieved.

Yep , the GNX4 is what I bought 2 weeks ago...its way beyond anything I imagined...its the "coolest toy a boy could have ...next to "Rock-em-Sock-em-Robots"...I've told my Family - "if I'm not out in 3 months , send in a search party"There's a pretty good web community built around it as well , with people developing sound patches for a specific tone and posting them on the Net for download (havent even attempted that yet)..I've got a 7 song CD demo done already.

*"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits".

Seahawks got robbed, they were the better team, but I guess it was decided before the game who was going to win. The officials were so one sided it was unbeliveable, had to be a payoff. Greycup, now that was a football game. Superbowl games have been supercrappy games for as long as I can remember, and yet another one can be added to the list.I liked the sprint locker room commercial, that had me laughing, Fed-x caveman was good and stunt city thought thats an old one.

EDIT and WTF was with that second song the stones played, all the great music thay have to choose from and they push new product, bitches.